Now People...

I had this fantastic philosophy teacher whose name I shall politely omit (not because I think he will stumble upon my blog -since the chances of that are less than the chances that Oprah will gain a conscience, donate all her personal belongings to charity and devote her life to feeding the poor- but because I respect the man too much to belittle him with a seemingly degrading blog post), since he has been such an inspiration to me that a humorous blog devoted to him seems mean-spirited.

Now don't get me wrong...I think naming a man and "making fun" of him is mean-spirited, however I am still doing it; but by not naming him I am merely pointing out a humorous part of my life without degrading an amazing person.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand...

I had a teacher who had, shall we say, a quirk. He would constantly interject the phrase "now people," or the word, "people," into his sentences. For example:

"Now people, don't get me wrong; but Kant didn't think this through..."

Or...

The only problem with this, people, is that existentialism ignored modern logic."

I'm not so sure you get my point. He said this phrase/word a LOT. As in a whole-friggin-lot.

I had taken a previous class with him and knew this quirk, so I decided, in one particular class, to take a tally of how many times he said it. I started out as a lone gunman, marking tallies between furious note-taking. Soon enough, my neighbors noticed something odd about my habits and asked what I was doing. When I informed them of my task, they gladly lended helping hands...pointing out "now people"s when I didn't notice.

The following picture is my tally sheet. I apologize for the poor quality:



It's not easy to see (click to enlarge), but he hit a max of 63 "now people"s on 3-28-05.

I considered making a nice laminated version of the tally sheet and giving it to him at the end of the semester; but I had this horrible vision of him feeling so much self-doubt about himself that he would fold into the fetal position in the middle of a class and never be able to teach again for fear that he would utter that god-forsaken phrase yet again. So I held on to it. And tonight I happened to stumble upon it and felt the insatiable need to share it with someone...even if that "someone" is the faceless internets that I stare into so many nights.

So enjoy, oh internets, and revel in the glory that is quirky teachers.